Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 40

Kelem turned his head to watch my progress. I saw his dry hands drip with my mother's blood. I saw the Red Queen, a child, kneeling before the ruin of her grandfather. I felt the pain that cored me when I woke from the blood-dream that showed me Mother dying and returned her to my memories.

"You carry something I have bought and sold, Prince Jalan." Perhaps Kelem could see the wheels turning in my head. Perhaps he knew he was losing me.

"I do?" I continued to hunt the sound, moving between the pillars.

"The sword at your hip. I recognize its taint. I procured it from a necromancer named Ch.e.l.la decades ago. It didn't come cheap, but the Blue Lady paid me ten times that price and more."

I paused, hand on the hilt of the weapon, glancing back at Kelem. "This? This was yours?"

"The Lady Blue had allies aplenty among the necromancers, long before there was a Dead King or any hint of him. She has been building their strength for years, seeding the unborn with such toys as that which you bear."

"If I have a price, Kelem, this is not lowering it." I cast about, straining for direction, willing the knocking to sound again. "Edris Dean tried to kill me with this blade."

"You were not his target, though," Kelem said. "Neither was your mother."

I stopped and faced him.

"Your sister." The spiders moved his jaws. "The planets aligned for that one. The stars held their breath to see her born. The Silent Sister thought the child would grow to replace her, to exceed her, to make this empire whole. And more . . ."

"To heal the world," I breathed. Grandmother thought I might be the one to undo the doom the Builders had laid upon us, but it wasn't me: our salvation had never been born.

"The sword you carry put your sister in h.e.l.l. Unborn. Sell the key to me and the author of her death will be thwarted in her ambition. With Loki's key I will own creation, and what I own I do not allow to come to harm."

My fingers flinched from the hilt as if it had grown too hot to touch. Edris's blade hadn't just cursed Snorri's son as it slew him in the womb, marking him to be unborn . . . it had done the same to my sister.

"What do you think the unborn were doing in Vermillion, Prince Jalan?" Kelem asked, silver legs stretching the leathery skin across his skull's grin. "The Dead King's captain, and the Unborn Prince, both of them in the same place, practically in the shadow of the palace walls? Both daring the Silent Sister's magics . . ."

"They were bringing an unborn into the world . . ." Even now the memory of the Unborn Prince made me shudder-just his eyes upon me through the slit of that mask.

"All that for a single unborn?" Kelem's head tilted with the question. "Haven't the Dead King's servants brought forth unborn in all manner of scattered spots, none of them half as dangerous as Vermillion?"

I recalled a grave horror rising in the cemetery where Taproot's circus had camped.

Kelem spoke again. "The older the unborn, the longer it has spent in h.e.l.l, the more powerful it is . . . the harder to return. And this one . . . this one needed a hole torn in the world, a hole so large a city might fall through. This one needed the strength of the two most powerful unborn this side of death's veil. This one . . . she needed the death of blood relatives to open her path. The death of a close relative best of all. A brother perhaps . . ."

"My . . . my sis-" The horror of it took me in its grasp, my feet rooted.

"Your sister was to be the Red Queen's champion. The Lady Blue took that piece and made it hers. As the Unborn Queen she might be the Dead King's bride, she might be his fist in the living world, the unknowing servant of Lady Blue, heralding the end of all things. That is who is waiting for death's door to open. That is why you should sell me the key and leave it closed. She needs your life, Prince Jalan. If she destroys you in the deadlands it will tear a hole through which she can be born at last into this world. If she comes through by some other path then killing you will cement her place here and stop her being cast back by the enchantments that might otherwise banish her." Kelem's chair moved closer, legs clicking beneath it. "You've no real choice here, Jalan. A sensible man like you. A pragmatist. Take the gold."

"I-" Kelem made sense. He made sense and offered a pile of gold so large a man could roll about in it. I could see it in my mind's eye, heaped and gleaming. But . . . the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's hands were dripping with my mother's blood.

The knocking sounded again, close by. None of them could hear it but me. I came closer to the source of the noise. BANG. BANG. BANG. Almost deafening. Kara said something but I couldn't hear her. A flicker of motion drew my eye, a black fist pounding against the surface of the crystal pillar closest to me, from the inside, the arm lost in a darkness that had polluted the column's clarity like ink drops in water.

"Every man has his price." Somehow Kelem's voice reached me through the din. I wondered what Snorri's price was, what my grandmother's price might be. Even Garyus, the third Gholloth, with his love of gold, his mastery of commerce . . . even he wouldn't sell a friend for as little as money. I didn't think it of Garyus-I both did and did not want to think it of me.

Sixty-four thousand . . . Kelem wouldn't show Snorri the door even if I sacrificed all those thousands. And even if he did Snorri would just march in to die-horrors would spill into the world, my unborn sister among them. Snorri would die and I'd own nothing but my rags, a tiny worthless corner of a salt mine, and a few other dribs and drabs that would be lucky to sell for fifty florins in total. There wasn't a choice to make here. Always take the- Blood. It seemed the whole floor swam with it, ankle deep and rising. I saw it drip from Gholloth's bed. I saw Garyus twist in the crimson swirls as the Silent Sister took his strength. It ran red from Tuttugu's opened neck. I saw it drip scarlet from Edris's blade as Mother slid from the steel. And I saw the hands behind each act, the blue and the grey, each stained with what I held precious, sacred.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

This whole nightmare had started with Astrid pounding on my door, dragging me from a good dream. Every part of my return had been about the opening of one door or another. It had been a mistake to open that first door too. I should have stayed in bed.

And yet . . . somehow my hand found itself reaching out to the crystal column towering above us. Somehow I found myself drawing forth Loki's key.

"No!" Kelem's shout.

The clatter of metal limbs as his spiders raced toward me. The roar as Snorri threw himself into their path, heedless of his injury and pain, swinging his father's axe.

Against all reason I found myself pressing the jet-black key to that impossibly flat surface, driving it into the neat dark eye of the keyhole that appeared beneath it . . . turning it as the voices rose behind me amid the din of combat.

The door blasted open with a force that sent me skidding across the floor. Midnight boiled out of it, imps of ebony, all horns and hooves and curling tails, huger and more terrible shapes rising behind them, wings canopied, bat-like creatures, serpents, shades of men, and in the midst of it all, surging forward, Aslaug, wrought in night-stained bone, her lower carriage a frenzy of arachnid legs that made Kelem's toys seem delicate and wholesome.

"Take him through!" I screamed, pointing at Kelem, compelling the forces of night with whatever magic and potential lay in me, calling on the bond I had been sworn to. The horde, sighting their tormentor and would-be lord, surged through the narrow portal, borne on a wave of liquid night. Aslaug fell upon Kelem in an instant, a howling, tearing fury as if my own rage had infected her. The rest followed and in their frenzy the creatures of darkness flooded over the ancient mage, black imps sinking fangs into each wizened limb, inky tentacles reaching from the portal to whip around him. They hated him anyway, for presuming to rule them, for his endless attempts to open and own the night door, and for so nearly succeeding.

The dark-throng dragged Kelem away, a riptide of horror, his throne and platform sc.r.a.ping through the face of the column, a mess of stained and twisted silver-steel legs left twitching in his wake. In the silent moment that followed a faint laughter echoed, not in my ears, through my bones-a laugh both merry and wicked, the kind that infects the listener and makes them smile. It came from the key. A G.o.d laughing at his own joke.

Snorri and I lay where we threw ourselves in the moment, sprawled on opposite sides of the deluge.

"Die, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" I shouted it after the door-mage, scrambling to my feet. I hoped Kelem would suffer there in the endless dark and that as he did he thought of the Kendeths and of the debt he owed us.

Aslaug remained, the crushed body of a mechanical spider in her hand, silver legs giving the occasional jerk. She towered above Kara, her face furious. Snorri got to his knees and shoved Hennan behind the next pillar. "Stay there!" A handful of night-imps still prowled the perimeter of the darkness smoking around the portal and other, less wholesome, things writhed half-seen behind them.

"Send them back," I hollered. Kara might have dealt harshly with Aslaug before but the volva was dark-sworn and the forces of night were hers to command if she had the will. Their allegiance hadn't shattered just because she had crossed one of their number.

I didn't need to urge Kara-the effort of her working showed in every line as she raised her arms in rejection.

"Out, night-sp.a.w.n. Out lie-born. Out daughter of Loki! Out child of Arrakni!" Kara repeated the incantation that had once driven Aslaug from her boat, her hands held before her, clawed in threat. All around her the darkness drew back, as if sucked through the doorway by a straw, down into the realms of night.

"I don't think so, little witch." Aslaug speared Kara with two black legs, pinning her to the next column, her robe tenting up around the impaling limbs.

Kara raised her head, b.l.o.o.d.y about the mouth and snarled, "Back!"

"Go back, Aslaug!" I shouted, and she turned that beautiful, terrifying face toward me.

"You can't just use me like that, Jalan. I'm not something to be cast aside once you've had what you wanted." I could almost believe the hurt on the stained ivory of her face was real.

I held my hands palm up in apology. "It's what I do . . ."

Snorri's short sword, thrown point over hilt over point, hammered between Aslaug's shoulder blades.

"Back!" Kara screamed.

"Back!" I shouted. I couldn't even feel bad about it.

And with darkness bubbling around the sword blade jutting from her chest, with her hands clutching at the sides of the column, with her black legs scrabbling for purchase against the retreating tide, Aslaug fell back, shrieking, into the night from which she came.

I rushed forward, tripping on a spider leg, and almost pitched headfirst after the demon. In the last moment I managed to catch at the door, invisibly thin, and slam it shut before me, smacking my face into it a split second later. Clinging on to consciousness, I fumbled the key forward and locked the door again.

"Christ on a bike." I fell back into my own darkness and didn't even feel my head hit the ground.

THIRTY-SIX.

I dreamed a pleasant enough dream, recalling the heady days when I'd traded on the floor of the Maritime House, those early days when it seemed I could do no wrong. The first lesson I'd learned there had been the most important. It concerned the value of information. No other currency held such worth in Umbertide. A rich man's wealth could be won and lost on a single pertinent fact.

I hadn't bought a controlling share in the failing Crptipa Mine on some nostalgic whim. I hadn't bought it against the possibility that one day I would want to get into it in a hurry. I'd bought the concern because I had a pertinent fact. A fact that represented long odds on a very significant change. I knew something. Something important. I knew that Snorri ver Snagason meant to go there.

I came round to find Hennan slapping me with considerably more enthusiasm than the task warranted, and the tatters of my dream were swept away.

"Kara?" I struggled into a sitting position.

Snorri knelt beside the volva. She lay, propped against the pillar where Aslaug had pinned her. Snorri had stripped her layers and lifted her unders.h.i.+rt to reveal ugly red weals across her ribs left and right. Some charm or spell must have denied her flesh to Aslaug's touch because the legs had thrust right at her. They must have seared Kara as they skidded over her skin, diverted from her vitals and left just pinning her by her clothes.

"A bitten tongue is the worst of it." Snorri looked across to me and abandoned Kara. He took my arm and hauled me to my feet.

"Jal." He brushed me down and stood back, looking solemn. "I knew you couldn't be bought."

"Hah." I rubbed my forehead, expecting my fingers to come back b.l.o.o.d.y. "You know I'm a man of honour!" I grinned at him.

Snorri gripped my forearm in the manner of warriors, and I held him back. We had a little moment there.

"What happened to your-" I pointed at his side, his jerkin holed in a score of places, ripped and discoloured, the crystal growths gone.

He patted his side and winced. "I don't know. When I threw that sword a chunk of the stuff cracked away. I pulled off the rest. It didn't seem . . . attached any more."

"Kelem's spell is broken." Kara hobbled over, supported by Hennan. "We could leave now?"

Snorri looked over at the volva and the boy, red-haired like his middle child. I wanted him to see the wife and son he could have, the life that could lie before him, not to replace what lay behind, but something . . . something good. Better than h.e.l.l in any case.

Snorri bowed his head. "I can't leave." He looked down at his hands, as if remembering how they had once held his children. "Show me the door. I've come too far to go back."

"I don't know which it is." Kara waved her arm at the columns marching away from us, the distance stacking them closer and closer until the eye lost their meaning. "That was Kelem's speciality. We came here to find Kelem, remember? Not the door. That lies everywhere. We just needed someone who could see it. And Jal has given him to the dark."

"He would never have told you, Snorri," I said. "He wouldn't have let us leave either, not with this." I held the key up. "Thank G.o.d sunset came when it did."

Kara gave me an odd look. "It's not sunset for a couple of hours and more."

I laughed at her. "Of course it is."

"I don't think so, Jal." Snorri shook his head. "Time gets turned around down here, true enough. But I'm with Kara. I can't believe I'm out by that much."

"It's you, Jal." Kara nodded. "You don't understand your potential. You bind yourself about with these rules, with lies you tell yourself to avoid responsibility. But you made Aslaug come. You found the door to her. You made it happen."

"I . . ." I closed my mouth. Perhaps Kara had it right. Now I considered it I would be surprised to find it dark if I climbed out of the mine right now. "Snorri has potential too. You said it yourself. He lights the orichalc.u.m brighter than you do."

"It's true," Kara said without rancour.

I looked up at Snorri, not sure whether to say it or not. "If you want death's door badly enough, then in this place you'll find it." I shook my head. "Don't look for it, Snorri. But if you do, and you find it, I will open it for you." And then madness took my tongue, "And go with you." I think it's a disease. Being treated like a brave and honourable man becomes an addiction. Like the poppy, you want more of it, and more. I'd eaten up the cheers offered for the hero of the Aral Pa.s.s, but to be treated as an equal by the Norseman made those cheers dim, those thrown petals pale. There's a sense of family in that warriors' grip. A sense of belonging. I understood now how Tuttugu, soft as he was, got drawn along with the rest of them. And G.o.d d.a.m.n it, it had got to me too.

"Come with me, brother!" Snorri started to stride down the hall like a man with purpose. "We'll open death's door and carry h.e.l.l to them. The sagas will tell of it. The dead rose up against the living and two men chased them back across the river of swords. Beside our legend Beowulf's saga will be a tale for children!"

I followed, keeping a brisk pace so the uncertainty nipping at my heels couldn't catch me. Kara and Hennan hurried along behind. My sister waited beyond the door, unborn, altered, hungry for my death. But Snorri had released his own child from that fate . . . surely a Kendeth could do the same? My head swam with visions of the parades they would hold for me in Vermillion on my return, the honours Grandmother would heap upon me. Jalan-conqueror of death!

It didn't take long for the foolishness to start to fade. I just had to remember the Black Fort to realize how little appet.i.te I really had for this nonsense. For the longest time I hoped my over-enthusiastic boasts wouldn't be put to the test, that Snorri's search would be fruitless, but in time he stopped, one hand set against a pillar that to my eyes looked exactly the same as every other.

"This one."

"You're sure?" I peered into the depths of it, trying to see something amid the pale fault lines stacked one on another, reducing its clarity to a misty core.

"I'm sure. I've stood a moment from death so many times. I know the feel of its threshold."

"Don't do it." Kara pressed between us. "I beg you." She looked up at Snorri, craning her neck. "The unborn could be waiting for you on the other side. Would you really unleash such things into the world? You've no weapons to stop them save steel. And once they hold it open . . . how long before the Dead King comes?" She turned to me. "And you, Jal. You heard what Kelem said. Your sister will hunt you down and eat your heart. Go through that door and how long do you think it will take her to find you?"

Snorri set both hands to the crystal. "I can feel it."

"They'll be waiting for you!" Kara grabbed his arm, as if she could hold him back.

Snorri shook his head. "If we were in the deadlands and I asked you where the door to life lay . . . what would you say?"

"I-" She pursed her lips, seeing the trap before I did. "It makes no more sense for it to be in one place there than it does for it to be in only one place here. It would be everywhere."

"And the unborn will be waiting . . . everywhere?" Snorri offered her a grim smile. "There will be nothing waiting for us. Jal will give you the key. Lock the door behind us."

I saw the calculation cross her face. Quick then gone. Skilfar had sent her for no reason other than this moment-the key offered freely, no trace of Loki's curse on it.

"Don't go." But the conviction had left her voice. That made me sad, but I suppose we're all victims of our ambition.

"Stay." Hennan, his first word on the subject, his bottom lip pushed up as if to steady the upper, eyes bright but refusing to say more, too used to disappointment. His years seemed too short to have beaten the selfish out of him, but there it was.

Snorri bowed his head. "Jalan. If you would do the honours?" He gestured to the crystal plane before us.

I always thought that phrase about blood running cold was a flight of fancy but the stuff seemed to freeze in my veins. There's a thing about being stuck between fear and pride, even though you know fear will win in the end it seems impossible to let go of the pride. So I stood there frozen, my face a rictus grin, the key trembling in my fist as if eager.

"Kara, Hennan." Snorri had them both in his arms in two quick steps, swept from their feet, lifted tight against his chest. "I would stay if I thought I could be the friend you needed." He held them close, squeezing any question or protest from them. A moment later he let them go. "But this thing." He pointed at the key, at the door. He waved at the world about us. "It would eat me away until nothing was left but a bitter old Viking without a clan, hating himself, hating whoever had kept him from his task. Fool's errand or not, it is my errand. It is my end. Some men have to sail to the horizon and keep going until the ocean swallows their story-this is the sea I must sail."

"All men are fools." Kara spat the words at the floor, wiping at her eyes. I agreed with her in this instance. She sniffed angrily and pa.s.sed Snorri her last rune. "Take it!"

Hennan watched Snorri, a single tear cutting a channel through the dirt across his cheek. "Undoreth, we. Battle-born. Raise hammer, raise axe, at our war-shout G.o.ds tremble." He said it high but firm, without a waver, and I swear, that whole time it was the only moment I thought Snorri might crack.